beerbaron

Fantastic, thanks! BeerBaron

Thanks, I found this site already. But these are charts, I'm more looking at the historical data. BeerBaron

Well, I could think of one reason... Loss reserves should usually lag the market. Bringing MTM would force banks to act faster on a change of market. You are right, if a loan portfolio is valued at MTM then it should not have a loss reserve. Unless the bank is begin extra conservative or knows something the market does not. BeerBaron

I'm looking for a site that can provide me with historical commodities prices (1990-Today) for commodities like corn of soy beans. Anybody has this kind of site? BeerBaron

If he lives in the US he can do it but in Canada 30Y fixed do not exist. Best you can get is 10Y and for a huge spread. BeerBaron

Of course they are levered, but that leverage could work both ways. I can't recall is it BV/share, BV or ROE they target at 15%? Anyway, would'n long term BV/Share growth and ROE go hand in hand if the reserves estimates are proper. BeerBaron

FFH also stated they were aiming at a 15% ROE and their portfolio investments are 22B... BeerBaron

For fun, I decided to look back at IBM vs the s&p 500. According to Morningstar, the stock has underperformed the market since 01/31/1962 by a huge margin. Anyone else realize that? Click on "compare" and then in the benchmark click on the s&p500. http://quote.morningstar.com/stock/chart.aspx?t=IBM&region=USA&culture=en-US Of course, that shows to show that great stock could or could not be great investments. It just depends on your entry point. BeerBaron

If you look at their ROE it's quite honorable. There are been some talks about their capital allocation skills but I think they deserve credit. They invested their money pretty well. Gates still has enough shares to stop anything stupid. It looks like IBM in 1993, every started to think about it as an old firm without any future... 80% stock price appreciation within 1 year. BeerBaron

Unbelieveable, MSFT is in the top 50 of Magic Formula. When I look at all the balloon valuations on small cap out there and MSFT in the Magic Formula I wonder what is going on in investor's heads! I'm not long MSFT yet but... BeerBaron

In Canada we have the equivalent of deposit insurance for brokers. IB is not part of this deposit insurance, doesn't that make some people cautious? BeerBaron

SJ, how do you tell the =GoogleFinance function to return a canadian stock if there is a comflicting ticker between US and Canada? BeerBaron

Parsad, maybe you can help me on this one. What's the upside for this kind of trials? Do you know if there is there any jurisprudence on any such case? The quality of the analysts following Overstock went down. BeerBaron

Here are a few: When you value an P/C casuality company, how do you establish that the reserves are accurate? Do you know how P/C and Life insurers would fare a long term low bond yield? (Japan example would be good) How long do you foresee the tail before the insurers adjust their rates for the low yields? How do you determine if an insurer is over-concentrated? What are the main "colibri in the mine" points every investor should look for in an insurer? Thanks BeerBaron

The batteries Mr. Wang is referring could be called by the following names: LiFe Lithium Ferrite LiFePO4 Lithium Ferrite Phosphate Lithium-Ion Ferrite The thing you need to remember is that they are all talking about Ferrite/Iron electrodes. There a huge number of players in the LiFe batteries, I can find 20 Chinese manufacturers of those batteries. For some reasons the patents seem to be easily bypassed, it's probably because a small change in the formulation does constitute a patent infringing. There are 3 general types of rechargeable lithium on the market: Li-Ion Li-Polymer LiFe LiFe is the way to go for the consumer product market unless size is critical. LiFe batteries do not explode making product manufacturer more inclined to use them. They have more charge cycles then the other 2 technologies. They are a bit cheaper then the other two. They can sustain a heavier electrical load then their counterparts. BeerBaron

EXXI is the one that I've spent the most time on. They are a GOM gas and oil production company that Baupost bought a small stake in in Q210. The value opportunity on this one was basically due to events in the gulf with the moratorium, etc. It is up 60% since then... Sweets congrats

So, were you successful at finding the undervalued part of the security you analyzed? BeerBaron

In my experience Baupost is hard to follow. In my experience I could not see where he got it's huge margin of safety. Last time I reviewed a company called AOI, they are the 2nd largest tobacco processor. I believe the thesis was that you just could not reproduce a second largest tobacco producer for 300M$, therefore it was worth more. Highly levered company so if there is liquidation you might end up with more then what you initially paid. So after 20 hours of research and re-reading Margin of Safety I still could not be sure exactly why he bough it. BeerBaron

OSTK is much easier to understand then Level 3. It's a turnaround story, Watsa just bough a bit too soon. BeerBaron

My head hurts! Hopefully Watsa will explain in English what this is tomorrow. BeerBaron

What is this? Is it a gain on the Run-Off they bought las quarter? A gain of $83.5 million on the excess of the fair value of net assets acquired over the purchase price of General Fidelity Insurance Company BeerBaron

Anybody noticed Google Finance does not give FFH quote anymore? BeerBaron

What do you want to know exactly? I deal with them daily and went there twice. BeerBaron

I love Lithium-Ferrite batteries, even used them in one of our retails products. They are everything BYD or A123 says and will be a perfect fit for cars . I'm affraid the capacity won't be there for a 500km car tough. What I expect by breakthrough is something to bring the electric car up to par with gasoline/diesel engine. BYD is an interesting growth story, no moat, but great tailwinds. BeerBaron

Anybody knows what's Fairfax cost on Overstock.com? BeerBaron